Retention, Tenure and Promotion (RTP) and Social Justice

These guiding questions address the larger context of the climate and mission of an academic department that may go beyond the RTP criteria.

• What are the expectations for the department and RTP Chair or Committee in the RTP process?
• What structural barriers in the university RTP system has your department identified that affect success for your candidates?
• What added value do faculty from historically excluded communities bring to the department?
• How can departmental RTP documents acknowledge the cultural taxation on faculty who belong to historically excluded backgrounds?
• Is there recognition of issues of labor justice in assignments of workload?
• What do the RTP documents say about values of the department?
• Does the RTP process consider the whole person, or fragment that person into only the three areas?
• Is the RTP process conceptualized as a developmental process?
• Are departmental policies and procedures, including RTP, transparent?
• Are RTP committees charged with supporting promising lecturer faculty to prepare them for tenure track positions?
• How are RTP and other departmental processes aligned with notions of equity and inclusion?
• How are faculty trained to be effective RTP Chairs and committee members?

• How are course load assignments addressed in RTP criteria?
• How do RTP criteria address the potential biases in SETE scores?
• How do RTP processes address the scheduling or and format of peer observations of teaching?
• Are social justice teaching methods valued and noted in RTP criteria?
• Is there recognition of the equitable distribution or workload of “difficult” classes in the department?
• Are RTP reports focused on strengths rather than deficit and formative and developmental in the early years?
• What and how many types of data do departments use to attest to the efficacy of a faculty member’s teaching?
• Are advising and mentoring, two very different activities, lumped together in RTP criteria?

• How is scholarship defined and measured in the departmental RTP expectations?
• Is there a compelling reason to specify a number of scholarly outputs?
• Is there a rationale for a formula or process calling for weighting of co-authored works? That is, is collaborative work valued or considered less than individual work?
• How are factors like “rigor,” “impact,” or “significance” of scholarly work defined and measured?
• Do textbooks and monographs count the same as peer-reviewed journal articles or books in university presses?
• When are external reviewers an advantage to faculty candidates?
• When does so-called “grey literature” count as scholarship?
• What is the value of translational work?
• How is the inclusion of students in research publications and presentations weighted or valued?
• How is collaboration in research and scholarship discussed, supported and valued?
• Is it feasible to give some credit for work not yet published or funded?
• How about curation work?
• How are equity issues with requirements for conference presentations addressed?

• Can faculty members truly decline certain service activities without penalty?
• How are the expectations of service articulated, and how are the commitments of faculty accepted and incorporated into faculty’s workload and trajectory?
• Do RTP criteria recognize the often invisible service activities of many faculty?
• Is there recognition of the added labor and cost involved in campus and professional organizations where the faculty member is expected to represent historically excluded communities on top of other duties?
• What about peer review activities?
• Where in the RTP dossier can faculty explain the interconnections of their service, scholarship, and teaching?

• How do departments engage midcareer faculty in planning their timeline towards application to Full?
• What does “leadership” mean?
• How can RTP Policies recognize multiple pathways to Full?

Ideally, an RTP criteria document outlines not only the expectations for candidates, but the obligations and expectations of the department and its faculty. These points might be outlined in the RTP criteria document or in the departmental policy manual. Departments should consider questions such as who is responsible for mentoring faculty around RTP and other policies and procedures, who is responsible for arranging for peer observations of teaching or soliciting external reviewers for scholarship, who is the designated expert on university RTP procedures for the department, how RTP committees are constituted, what are the roles of RTP committee members, who will guide the candidate through the Interfolio process and help them organize their files, who checks in with new faculty on a regular basis, etc. These items often constitute the hidden agenda of RTP when not clearly articulated.

As a department/program, acknowledge and name the structural barriers to RTP to faculty from historically excluded groups. Recognize that the tenure and promotion system was built on an unexamined concept of meritocracy (first initiated by AAUP in 1940), along with other problematic concepts such as” rigor” and “excellence,” which can be code for maintaining exclusivity and segregation. Consider which of the barriers might be addressed at the department or college level, and which may require working with higher level administration to reform or transform higher level systems. This acknowledgement of structural barriers highlights the fact that the playing field is not level and that there are more obstacles in place for some faculty compared to others. Is hiring of diverse faculty done without support to nurture such faculty in the RTP process?

Recognize that faculty from historically excluded communities bring more than their individual academic training and scholarly expertise to a department. They also bring fresh new perspectives, relationships with underrepresented communities, relationships with the people in their classrooms who come from similar backgrounds and communities that have not often been reflected among the faculty, and they complement the strengths already present in a department. Their impact in the area of connections and obligations to communities creates opportunities for broad impact on those communities and opportunities for students that are often not reflected in RTP criteria. We recognize that faculty candidates may not be the best situated to explain their unique contributions to a department. It may fall on the department chair or another senior faculty member to outline ways that the department/program has been enhanced by this candidate’s presence beyond their scholarly expertise or the range of courses that they can teach.

Acknowledge and find ways to track and measure the reproductive labor/cultural taxation of faculty from historically excluded groups. Faculty from historically excluded communities may be inundated with requests to be on committees, task forces, and advisory boards; requests to be guest speakers in other faculty members’ classes; urged to mentor students outside of their programs, such as advising student organizations or doing individual mentoring work; asked to represent the department, college, or university at public events; be a liaison to communities; and many more. Many of these activities are of high impact to student success and to university relations with local communities and need to be more highly valued. They often cut across teaching, scholarship, and service.

This includes the notion of safety to express or embody one’s identities, valuing of community affiliations and cultural values, and expertise in the workplace and in one’s research and teaching that goes beyond traditional academic training. Some faculty from historically excluded groups have greater caregiving responsibilities in their families and communities. In addition, is there recognition that more emotional labor may be required in teaching, scholarship, and service activities where some faculty must carry the additional burden of representation for entire communities in these spaces?

Are they grounded in individual value systems such as meritocracy or neoliberal values that favor competition, lone scholarship, strict deadlines, deliverables, and assimilation, or do they reflect communal values of cooperation, collaboration, and belongingness? How are the values of the department expressed in the “hidden curriculum” of unwritten expectations for its members? Do RTP criteria reflect the mission of the department/program, college, or university?

For example, caregiving activities (child and other family), community embeddedness and activism, disability, intersectional identities, and other factors affect progress on the tenure track. Some of the activities of the individual in community foster the reputation of the university, encourage students who would not otherwise apply to come to SF State, open doors for student internship placements, and otherwise are compatible with the goals of the university. Is there a place within the RTP process to explore the more personal aspects of the individual and the communities from which they come and the impact of their faculty status on their efforts within their communities?

RTP should be considered a developmental process that is guided and supported by all levels from department/program to administration of the university. Some faculty have experienced discouraging critical or even punitive comments early on, as they are trying to learn baffling new systems, prepare to teach new classes, and launch their research agendas within a strange new system (that lacks much infrastructure to assist them), all while adjusting to a new region. It might be useful to explicitly state the commitment to faculty development in the criteria, even outlining how the department RTP committee or chair or other senior faculty will mentor non-tenured faculty in RTP processes, or assist them in finding mentors outside of their departments as needed. The college may also take a role in finding mentors for new faculty as part of a more robust new faculty orientation process or more systematic faculty development effort. RTP guidelines should also note that mentoring relationships, whether one-on-one or in groups like Faculty Learning Communities, are time-intensive for all involved, but this effort is often unrewarded or seen as a “gift” to the faculty member rather than another work commitment, helpful though it may be. Although we applaud the stipends that are offered for some programs, such as some through CEETL, these do not account for the time taken away from other activities, such as scholarship, to engage in these intensive programs. Finally, in a developmentally-oriented RTP process, earlier reports would be formative rather than only evaluative, offering constructive comments and specific recommendations that are not only directed at what the individual faculty member can do, but what supports the department/program or college will offer toward future success.

Transparency is a critical component of a just RTP process. When some expectations are hidden or not articulated, or are embedded in the oppressive structures of a university, faculty from historically excluded groups suffer disproportionately. We recognize that many departments assign numbers to the metrics to try to make their criteria clear (such SETEs under 2.0; 3-4 peer-reviewed journal articles or a menu of scholarly products; how many articles need to be single or first authored, etc.), but this can lead to more confusion than transparency and run counter to individual faculty teaching, scholarship or service goals. In some departments, there is a lack of transparency about the promotion from Associate to Full Professor that may keep some faculty languishing in the Associate rank much longer than necessary.

In efforts to ensure the faculty represent the student body, one under-utilized pool of talent is our lecturers. As a group, the lecturer pool is more diverse than the tenure track faculty, and one role of departmental RTP and Hiring Committees may be to mentor and foster the development of promising lecturer faculty into the tenure track.

RTP processes can only be fair if the department and the university as a whole has attended to issues of inclusivity and social justice in their daily operations. Labor justice, or how the work of teaching and service are distributed among the faculty is one of those daily operations that requires scrutiny, and general culture/climate of a department can also be considered. How are new faculty nurtured?

Training of RTP chairs and senior faculty committee members in these principles as well in the university RTP process and policies, is critical to the success of non-tenured faculty. Is there ongoing faculty development in leadership skills with attention to the areas of inclusion and equity?

The Working Circle recognizes that effective teaching is the heart of our college and education can be a key to social justice implementation and liberation. However, we had many concerns about the evaluation of teaching that centers too much on the use of potentially biased and narrow metrics. There was also concern about how course loads are distributed among faculty and how safe a department is for faculty to experiment with cutting edge teaching methods. This section outlines these questions.

How are course load assignments addressed in RTP criteria?

Labor justice is a critical construct to consider in evaluating course loads of individual faculty before and during RTP evaluations:

• how many new preps a faculty member has had during the review period (with consideration for possibly worse SETEs the first time teaching a new course, particularly out of one’s area);
• the type of classes taught (such as considering that certain courses are harder to teach and more likely to elicit negative student comments, such as social justice oriented content and pedagogy, research methods and theory courses, GWAR courses).

Faculty from historically excluded groups are often hired expressly to teach such classes without consideration of their inherent challenges, especially to new, more vulnerable teachers. Some courses require more intellectual and emotional labor to teach, without any support system in place if students become resistant, hostile, or reactive. In fact, senior faculty may refuse to teach these more challenging courses because of the greater work involved or fear of getting more negative evaluations, further burdening faculty lower in rank or years in service. Perhaps a letter from the department chair could comment on the labor justice issues in course load; at minimum, a description of why these courses are challenging to teach might be included in the RTP portfolio and re-iterated by the RTP Committee and Chair of the department/program in their reports, rather than putting all of the burden on the candidate to explain lower SETE scores or negative student comments if they occur (we recognize that many faculty excel at teaching such courses and their exemplary efforts should be celebrated in RTP letters). One way to explore the complexity of course loads in the context of student evaluations is to provide a more fine-grained analysis of teaching. For example, a table or document that addresses the following issues might be more helpful than merely SETE and departmental means.

SETE quantitative scores and other supposedly objective scales used to assess student satisfaction with their classes are well-known to contain significant biases for women, faculty of color, faculty with disabilities, faculty of other historically excluded groups, and faculty with accents. We urge that less emphasis be placed on these numbers, and more consideration of student comments (recognizing that these too can contain bias such as commenting on the appearance of female-identifying faculty or questioning credentials of faculty of color). Other indicators of teaching effectiveness could be strengthened as well to reduce the reliance on the SETEs. If a developmental approach to RTP is embraced, the trends over time will become more valuable than a static view or a focus on past problems with some courses.

Peer observations of teaching are equally problematic for many faculty candidates, and often are often of little value in the RTP evaluation process or as constructive feedback to faculty being observed. Instead of a high stake, one-time observation, we propose that peer observations could transform into a sustained dialogue between faculty members. We urge that observations of teaching, at least in the first four years, become a formative process with a discussion of the evolution of teaching goals, strategies, and resources, rather than an objective, critical, or static evaluation, and that true peers are involved in advancing a faculty member’s pedagogy and teaching methods. We recognize that our contract requires a hierarchical observation ladder (e.g. Associate Professors observing Assistant Professors, Full Professors observing Associate Professors), however, this proposed methods assumes that all faculty and all ranks can improve their teaching and that reflexive teaching can be a dialogical tool for our faculty rather than a one-way observation. See Appendix I.a. for examples of alternative and developmental processes for peer observations.

Preferably, peers from other departments or programs could serve as observers for each other as part of faculty learning communities such as CEETL has established. In addition, some of the currently used checklists or scales for peer observations don’t allow for consideration of the individual faculty member’s teaching styles, unique skills, or cultural values. Generic forms don’t allow for the nuance of the type of class; for example, there may be ways to evaluate whether a course comes from a social justice perspective that could be helpful to the faculty member rather than punitive, as scales can often be.

We recognize that chairs and RTP chairs are encouraged to write evaluative comments and summative reports in reviews and tenure and promotion reports. The two are not mutually exclusive; a developmental process centering the needs and goals of probationary faculty can also lend themselves to evaluative comments.

Neither SETEs nor peer observations of teaching may focus on whether the class is grounded in social justice or equity practices, which may put other methods of evaluating teaching effectiveness into perspective. Narratives are currently used to describe teaching philosophies and explain any issues with SETEs, rather than being a place for candidates to self-reflect on their own journey, as would be the case if RTP was seen as a developmental process. Narratives could also highlight any social justice teaching methods or orientations of the faculty member.

In relation to teaching difficult classes (or really any classes for that matter), RTP criterion often do not take into account the need for reflection and experimentation as part of the process of developing one’s style and philosophy as a teacher. This reflective work may be done individually, with students (formative focus groups, mid-term evaluations, or innovative ways of including students in a democratic process to develop the course), or faculty learning communities. This reflection work is often time-consuming and is rarely counted as one of the teaching components evaluated in the RTP process. In addition, the scholarly work of reading and synthesizing a body of literature to be effective in teaching such a course is unacknowledged labor, particularly for faculty who are assigned new courses on a regular basis.

Many probationary faculty have experienced receiving critical or even punitive comments about their teaching on their early comprehensive reviews, such as the two-year review. This can be demoralizing particularly to faculty who were first generation students and have not been acclimated in this type of critical process that is common in academics. Instead of deficit language, we urge RTP reports to identify areas of improvement and help candidates set attainable goals with the appropriate support needed for success.  If RTP is truly seen as a developmental process, the early reports can be more formative in tone than evaluative.

Varying the data to assess the teaching efficacy of a faculty member can assist in creating a more robust picture of a faculty member’s philosophy and persona as an educator. As mentioned before, quantitative student evaluation scores often contain significant biases for women, faculty of color, faculty of other historically excluded groups, faculty with disabilities and faculty with accents. We propose that in an effort to self-define their pedagogy and methods, faculty and reviewers take multiple types of data to construct a faculty’s teaching efficacy. See Appendix I.b. for a list of possible materials to include during assessment.

Advising and mentoring of students are often lumped together in RTP policies under teaching effectiveness, and are not considered as separate and often time-consuming endeavors. This is particularly true when faculty from historically excluded groups are sought out by students outside of their departments/programs, students from other universities who need formal or informal mentoring (such as being on thesis or dissertation committees), and student organizations within and outside of the faculty member’s department who seek a faculty advisor/mentor. Often a disproportionate load of both advising and mentoring fall on faculty from historically excluded groups, who take on not just the academic aspects of their student workloads, but their material and emotional needs as they struggle with homelessness, food insecurity, mental and physical health disability, family caregiving responsibilities, racism and other forms of oppression, and unfamiliarity with the academic environment, among others. We recommend that RTP expectations separate out departmental and course advising from broader mentoring and provide some guidelines for each separately. For example, mentoring could be included in all three categories of evaluation of tenure track faculty: mentoring students in one’s own department for graduate education or careers; mentoring students or other faculty in research; and mentoring students, faculty, or community members outside of one’s department, college, or university as a service activity for the campus as a whole.

Is the definition broad enough to encompass the wide diversity of theoretical perspectives and methods of all faculty? Do the expectations for scholarship recognize the different types of scholarly outputs that might not be the peer-reviewed journal article? How is “peer-reviewed” defined? Some work is rigorously reviewed by community advisory groups and stakeholders--are those considered as peers? Is there any language in the RTP criteria about types of research expected? For example, some scholarship critically examines the state of the field and highlights future questions that need to be addressed, other types are aimed at answering questions. Both are valuable contributions to knowledge development in a field, although they use very different methods. Do RTP guidelines or unwritten expectations of faculty value empirical studies over theoretical or conceptual work, reviews of the literature, or translation of research into practice, for example? Broadening the list of accepted scholarship in a department RTP guidelines can open up how faculty can address the various types of scholarship in their publication record (See Appendix II.a.)

Or is there a way to have more specificity and transparency about the evaluation of quality or impact rather than quantity? Is there an expectation of publishing in top-tier journals or presses? These should be spelled out if so. Is there an expectation of a certain number or percentage of single authored works?

Methods of calculating contribution to co-authored books, chapters, or journal articles need to be reconsidered. Faculty are currently asked to explain their contribution to the written piece, which may considerably underestimate their involvement in the larger project. For example, a team of authors may be relatively equally involved with the intellectual work of formulating a project, working out the methods, collecting data, analyzing data, conceptualizing theoretical frameworks, etc., but have a smaller involvement in the actual writing up of the work. It might be more just for RTP Committees to evaluate both of these contributions. RTP guidelines could acknowledge that the intellectual labor of designing and carrying out a study may be much greater than the contribution to the writing of the article/chapter. In addition, counting one’s position in the authorship list can also be misleading. An article with a student co-author listed first may have been an equal or even greater investment of the faculty member. In a community action or community based participatory study, the community partners may be listed first even if the research partner actually devoted more time and intellectual work to the article. Contribution to an individual article or chapter or report needs to be considered more holistically than percent of time spent on the writing of the piece or the order in the author list.

Scholarly outputs are typically measured by the unexamined concept of “rigor” of the study or its impact. Both methods have potential drawbacks. Rigor varies from one field to another, but is often reduced to the standards imposed by highly controlled studies and sophisticated quantitative analysis procedures, which are often not possible when research is done in local communities and real-life settings. Rigor could be considered more broadly such as consideration of importance of the topic in terms of health or social disparities or injustice work, or how much impact the findings have on the communities being studied rather than merely impact on other scholars. Impact is often measured via journal metrics like impact factor (which are nearly universally criticized as measures of an individual scholar) and citation rates. Citation rates may be useful later in the RTP process as an indicator of relatively long-term impact in one’s discipline, but are rather meaningless in the first few years after publication. Other indicators of impact on communities might be media attention to the research (such as newspaper articles or TV interviews), impact on policy makers (such as changes in laws or policies that stemmed from the research), national and international attention (such as being nominated for and/or winning research paper awards at conferences) or journal downloads (number of times the article was read), and so on. If a department’s criteria specify “top-tier” journals, there should be some rationale for why this is so, and how to identify which journals are top tier. For applied researchers rooted in communities, practice or specialty journals are often more appropriate outlets for dissemination than top-tier journals in a discipline. Consideration of appropriate audiences for scholarly work should take precedence over journal rankings.

These outputs may require as much theoretical rigor and translation/synthesis of research literature as original research, but have much broader impact on the field, as well as on students and communities. Other outputs that can be highly impactful include documentary films, educational resources, “visual ethnographies,” and continuing education articles or programs. In addition, public intellectual activities, such as presenting to local legislators or school boards or at venues such as the Commonwealth Club have great value and elevate the reputation of the university. Some faculty members who develop blogs about their work may be far more widely read, thus have greater impact than a peer-reviewed article read by a handful of other scholars.

Some departments require or encourage external reviewers of scholarship while others do not. We urge departments to consider the value of these reviewers. If the faculty candidate’s work is outside the expertise within the department, such as in cutting edge research or new methodologies or theories, external reviews may provide a broader view of the impact of the work and be advantageous to the candidate. In the case of faculty who conduct research in other countries and in other languages, external reviews may also be essential. We urge RTP committees to consider the best way to identify these reviewers so that their expertise matches the faculty members’ areas of scholarship.

Much scholarship, like needs assessments and reports of community disparities or impact of policies and laws on communities comes from partnerships of faculty members with local communities and culminates in technical reports. These reports may not be considered appropriate for peer-reviewed journals because they focus on highly specific agencies or communities, however, they may have significant impact on those local contexts, leading to positive changes in the communities served. Do RTP expectations about scholarly impact only measure impact on the national or international scale, or do local indicators of impact count?

Faculty members may engage in translation of research into other languages for wider distribution to international audiences, or translation of the work of other scholars into English. This is often rigorous and challenging work. Another example is translating research findings for clinical or community audiences, which often has greater and broader impact than just writing for other academics. If these are valued activities in one’s discipline or department, they should be included in a menu of options for scholarly outputs.

Including students in a research project is mutually beneficial to faculty and students, but often entails more work of training and supervising for faculty. Yet there is no current system for rewarding publishing with students. This type of mentorship of students is an example of invisible labor.

Grant-writing is often not clearly identified on RTP criteria. Faculty get “credit” for getting funded, but not for the effort required to write grants that are not ultimately funded. In this institution of limited infrastructure for grant-writing and grant oversight, these efforts need to be recognized in some way. In addition, some articles may undergo extensive rounds of revision and resubmit before publication. They fall into a different category than works that have been submitted but not yet reviewed. Another example are conference papers; some academic associations require a full paper (20 pages or more) for acceptance as a presenter. Can these works, although not yet in press or not yet funded, be acknowledged in some way?

Some faculty members are involved in curation work, including soliciting articles or chapters for edited journal issues or books, creating museum exhibits, setting up community fairs, or organizing other events in communities that showcase scholarship in formats that are appropriate for community dissemination.

Some RTP criteria specify a number of conference presentations, such as one per year, as a marker of PAG. In this climate of budget shortfalls where there is little or no travel money available, this becomes an issue of equity. Some faculty simply cannot afford to attend conferences as frequently. The valuing of conferences as places to get feedback on one’s research is highly overrated, as the experience of many faculty is to present a paper and receive little or no comment about it. If PAG was considered a developmental process, having local mechanisms for peer review, such as presenting papers in faculty forums or to graduate students or local community town hall meetings for discussion may generate more constructive feedback and provide a forum for faculty scholarly development that is far more helpful.

Faculty at all ranks, but particularly at the probationary levels, must feel safe to say no to specific service activities. Often subtle coercive comments push faculty into agreeing to service activities too soon, activities that might put their scholarship in jeopardy. Comments such as “This will look good on your CV,” or implications that saying yes will indicate the faculty member is a “team player,” have been experienced by many faculty. If RTP is a developmental process, the criteria should spell out the expectations, for example, that in regards to campus service, the first two years can be devoted to departmental level activities until the faculty member is acclimated to the particularities of their own programs and students. For equity among faculty in a department, a menu of service activities (along with an estimate of the time and energy involvement of each) within the department can be presented and faculty are allowed to identify the areas of preference. In departments where some senior faculty are allowed to shirk departmental service, probationary faculty feel forced to carry a heavier load.

The CHSS Task Force on Service published guidance on service expectations as they appear and operate in RTP policies in the college suggesting that departments and faculty articulate expectations about on- and off-campus service for tenure-track and tenured faculty. In this report, the task forces suggests a ‘Sample Progression of On-Campus Service” that outlines what the service workload may look like for tenure-track and tenured faculty  (See the appendix on the CHSS Task Force on Service’s full report). Although the report and its suggestion to have clear expectations for on-campus service, it does not capture the prior commitments and/or future commitments of historically excluded faculty to the communities they belong to. It also does not capture how faculty from historically excluded faculty are often doing on-campus service, elected and appointed, yet many other types of service to the department, college and university are rarely recognized. A initial and continuing dialogue on the changing nature of service commitments, and its interconnections to faculty’s teaching and scholarship, can help faculty and their departments understand the nuances of the service of all faculty.

Campus service beyond elected committees and standing committees is often not recognized. Faculty from underrepresented communities have been  more likely to be solicited for ad hoc working groups, curricular revision or development work in other departments, to advise student organizations outside of their departments, create, organize, and deliver public campus events that are interdisciplinary (local conferences, speakers, panels), and to do public relations work for the university. This can lead to racialized tokenization and added work-related stress.  Some of these activities can involve a great deal of scholarly rigor, yet are not always recognized as either scholarship or service. This important yet “invisible” work, also known as hidden service, is often unnoticed and undocumented on CVs and letters of support.

Being on a campus committee where one is required to educate others about their communities can be hard work, usually not recognized in service letters. Service activities that are chosen by or coerced onto faculty from historically excluded groups may constitute a greater workload than other departmental colleagues carry. As mentioned earlier, mentoring of students from outside of one’s program is an example. Others include being a mentor to a newer faculty member, being a part of a very active faculty learning community or research team, working very closely with a community non-profit agency, heading a research team for a community agency to do needs assessment projects or evaluations of programs (and that might include opportunities for student involvement). Similarly, there is little value put on professional organizations in RTP criteria, yet they are an opportunity for social networking, for broad national and international impact, and opportunities for research collaborations and for leadership roles. These activities might include membership in professional organizations (number and type), leadership in those organizations (being an officer, chairing committees or task forces, organizing conferences, reviewing conference abstracts, etc.). Many professional organizations tap their members from specific communities or with particular scholarly expertise to help them write policy statements or press releases regarding issues of social justice. In many professional organizations, it is subgroups of members from historically excluded groups that have the most active and involved work that may include also representing their community’s interests within the larger organization as well as organizing and nurturing other members of historically excluded communities in the discipline.

In terms of peer review, considerable effort may be expended in reviewing manuscripts for publication (articles or books) within one’s area of expertise--for faculty with special knowledge sets or focus on historically excluded communities, they may be more frequently solicited for such review. Being on an editorial board or editing a special issue of a journal or a book are also time-consuming, but impactful forms of service that are often somewhat hard to quantify.

Because of the wide diversity of service activities, RTP narratives should frame the terrain of the individual faculty member’s work, showing how their scholarship, teaching, and/or service activities intersect and inform one another within the faculty member’s larger terrain of community embeddedness, and provide a context for evaluating the service. For example, faculty members who do community action or other forms of community-embedded work must have active and engaged connections with such communities, which will inform their research and teaching as well as give back to those communities. They may involve students in their service and research activities in the community and indeed such projects blur the lines between scholarship, teaching, and service.

Departments and the college need to consider a strategic plan for continued faculty development after tenure and promotion to Associate. At times the guidelines for promotion to Full can be vague in contrast to the specificity of guidelines to earn tenure and Associate. Alternatively, the guidelines demand a higher commitment to scholarship and research, teaching, leadership and service, without acknowledging that the stakes are lower to achieve “exceptional” standards. In creating a plan with midcareer faculty, transparency around the candidate’s vision and the department’s expectations can be clarified.

A recurring expectation for Associate faculty to be promoted to Full is leadership. However, departments must consider defining that word and work. And more importantly, to identify areas that need leadership and shared governance to urge and inform candidates of opportunities to step into roles of leadership.

It is generally accepted that the expectation and the reality of service demands increase when a faculty member reaches Associate. For faculty from historically excluded backgrounds, stepping into leadership and service to the department, college and university have markedly encumbered their research and scholarship agendas. Yet, their roles as leaders are impactful. Departments should consider acknowledging multiple pathways where Associates are developing as leaders, whether that be in their field of scholarly expertise, teaching and pedagogy, service and leadership to the campus and community beyond SFSU.

History of the Working Circle, Charge, and Overview

College of Health and Social Sciences Dean Alvin Alvarez convened the working circle in the spring semester of 2022 as the next step in the RACE Collective work of creating racial justice and an inclusive climate in CHSS for staff, faculty, and students from any historically excluded group. The mission of the RACE Collective is:

This working circle was charged to focus on Retention, Tenure, and Promotion (RTP) policies and practices in the college. While CHSS has long been aligned with activism and social justice in all its forms, thus far there has been little systematic effort to operationalize that activist spirit into administrative policies and procedures. In the spring semester of 2023, Assistant Dean of Restorative and Transformative Racial Justice, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, led the effort in distributing a working draft of this paper with the help of faculty facilitators and chairs of CHSS to spark sustained dialogue about incorporating principles of racial and social justice into RTP processes in the college.

RTP is one of the institutional practices that creates the most stress and burden on tenure track faculty at all levels. The charge to the committee was to provide context and guidance that might be helpful to departments/programs as they revise their RTP expectations. We recognize that each discipline is unique and that not all suggestions here will be applicable; and we acknowledge that many departments are already sensitive to the issues raised here. But as the college honors its commitment to seek and nurture faculty who better represent the people in the classrooms and communities that SFSU serves, these guidelines may be helpful to shaping the future of our college and its peoples.

This document begins with a prelude: a broad statement of recognition of and solidarity for the lived experiences of multiracial and multicultural faculty. The rest of the document focuses on the RTP process. We begin with general considerations that stem from the prelude and then provide concrete ideas for each section of RTP evaluation--teaching effectiveness, professional achievement and growth, and contributions to campus and community. This is followed by a short section on the intersections of these three areas and considering better ways to encourage and reward faculty who do social justice work in all three areas in an integrated way that is sometimes hard to parse into one of the three buckets of evaluation. Finally, we address some of the issues that arise in the promotion from Associate to Full Professor.

Before continuing, we want to acknowledge the challenges of choosing terminology for this document. We were charged with examining the RTP process with an eye toward racial justice, but agreed as a group that all of us have intersecting and complicated identities that cross race/ethnicity, national origins, linguistic, immigrant or refugee status, gender, sexuality, class, ability levels, and many more. We introduce the idea of “people in the academy from communities facing historical and on-going intersecting systems of expropriation, exploitation, and exclusion” in the opening prelude, but shorten this to people from historically excluded groups for most of the document. We also recognize that there are times when specific groups need to be named, as in the recent Black Lives Matter movement, and leave it up to departments to determine their own language.

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Associate Professor of Sociology/Sexuality Studies

Sheldon Gen, Professor of Public Affairs & Civic Engagement

David Rebanal, Associate Professor of Public Health

Cesar (Ché) Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies

Sherria Taylor, Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Development

Mickey Eliason, Professor of Public Health and Assistant Dean for Faculty Scholarship

Sherria Taylor, Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Development

Cesar (Ché) Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies

David Rebanal, Associate Professor of Public Health

Sheldon Gen, Professor of Public Affairs and Civic Engagement

Aiko Yoshino, Associate Professor of Recreation, Parks & Tourism

Sandra Fitzgerald, Associate Professor of Counseling

Gretchen George, Associate Professor of Family, Interiors, Nutrition & Apparel

Nicole Bolter, Associate Professor of Kinesiology

Rebecca Carabez, Professor of Nursing

Casey Nesbit, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Associate Professor of Sociology/Sexuality Studies

Consultant on Disability Justice: Susan Zieff, Professor of Kinesiology